


Group Therapy

by A55hole69



Series: The Great Adventures of Roman and the Avengers [8]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Attempted Murder, Deaf Character, Ducks, Gen, Light Angst, Lions, Motorcycles, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21658780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A55hole69/pseuds/A55hole69
Summary: "You need to be more careful, Roman. You could have died.""Be more careful. Does this mean I can't break into the lion enclosure at the zoo and play with them?""Play with the what?"Or, the one where Roman has to go to group therapy for veterans with PTSD  and they see a side of her no one has ever seen before.
Relationships: Tony Stark & Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Great Adventures of Roman and the Avengers [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1471691
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	Group Therapy

"Why are you here, Roman?" 

"Apparently, the judge thinks I have PTSD because I stabbed a lady in my anger management class." Roman answer boredly, she looked at all the faces in the group. "I don't need to be here, being a Navy Seal was the least traumatic thing that ever happened to me, and I've been tortured six times."

"It sounds like you do need to be here." Curtis stated, he leaned forward slightly, "What was the most traumatic thing that ever happened to you?" 

Roman rolled her eyes, she had answered this exact question so many times if anyone asked her again she was going to kill them. "From the ages of four to seventeen, my dad performed painful experimentations on me. On the bright side, I'm not autistic anymore." 

"Jesus." One of the guys whispered.

Curtis cleared his throat, "How are you coping with that?" 

"I live with the satisfying knowledge that he died painfully. It's been thirty seven years, I got over it." She kept checking the clock above Curtis' head, and kept getting disappointed when she realised only five minutes passed.

Curtis read the paper Roman gave to him when she got here, "It says here that I'm supposed to take your weapons."

Roman frowned, "Why?"

"You stabbed someone." Curtis gave her a metal box to put them in, "Come on."

Roman sighed and took the box, she stood up and put it in her chair. First, was the gun she kept in the waistband of her pants at the back, then she pulled out the smaller one in her boot. Next was the pair of silver daggers in her other boot and the brass knuckles in her jacket pocket. There was the knife in her hair disguised as a hair pin and the switch blade in her pants pocket. Then she unzipped her jacket, revealing a knife holster strapped to her chest, Roman unsheathed the knife and dropped it in the box, she reached at her sides and unsheathed two obscenely large knives both with hooks on the end. Roman pat herself down to see what else she had and reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out pepper spray.

She handed the box to Curtis, who looked stunned, and sat back down.

"Why do you think you need so many weapons on you?" He asked .

She shrugged, "I usually don't, but my niece is staying with me and my wife this weekend, and there's creeps all over."

"Are you working?" 

"I'm a mechanic, sometimes I help the CIA with certain situations, and I volunteer at a homeless shelter on Sundays. Sometimes I go hunting, something my wife got me into. Crippling hunters is very therapeutic." She looked around the room, "You guys should try it."

"No. No. No. No one is trying anything. First of all, that's illegal. Second of all, why?"

"Any person who hunts animals for fun should be murdered, violently. You can kill as many humans as you want, but stay away from the animals." 

"How many pets do you have?"

"Isn't this a group thing? I'm pretty sure at least one of these guys needs you more than I do." The question was more curious than defensive. Roman was relaxed in her chair, long legs stretched out and crossed and arms laying on her stomach.

"This is your first time, we usually put aside some time to get to know the first timers." Curtis answered.

Roman nodded, "I have eight dogs, a wolf, and a cat." 

"Why did you stab that lady?"

"She was being a dick. She's been taking her shit out on everyone in the group ever since she got there. Then last week, I was talking, like everyone does, and she got offended by something I said. Long story short, she started a fight and I finished it." 

Curtis nodded, "I think we have enough. Alright, let's begin."

*

*

The session was over, Roman got back her box of weapons after Curtis signed the papers she brought. After putting them all back in place she joined the other veterans at the table and picked up a glazed donut. Right as she was about to leave one of the men stopped her.

Her was average looking, average height, he had to look up at her, he was young, buzz cut, blue eyes and pale skin. "Some of us like to go for a drink after these things, we were wondering if you would want to come?"

"No thank you, I don't drink." She gave him a pat on shoulder and left the room. She bumped into a man standing outside the door, it looked like he was hiding from someone. He wore all black, a hoody under a coat, and a hat.

"Sorry." He muttered.

Roman paid him no mind, he didn't set off any warning bells in her head, "It's no problem." 

She walked down the hall and bit into the donut. Roman left the building and jogged across the road to her car. Her car was a bright yellow Audi R8 with tinted windows. It was a retirement gift from Tony, he even upgraded it.

As soon as she got in, her phone rang. It was Everett Ross. Roman answered, "Yes?"

"Look inside the glove box." 

She sighed and reached across to open the glove box, there Roman found a small envelope containing a flash drive.

"It's your assignment, you have two weeks to finish it or else something really bad is going to happen. I left a gift for you in the back seat." He hung up.

Roman turned to look in the backseat and found an unconscious man bound and gagged. It was dark so she couldn't make out any features. What she could see, was the giant yellow bow in the man's forehead. It made Roman burst out in laughter.

*

*

The following week Roman found herself back at the meeting, not by choice. She needed Curtis to sign the papers nine more times before she could stop coming here. She was tired this week, having just finished the assignment Ross had given her. 

There was still blood under her finger nails and she had a small cut on her eyebrow along with a large bruise on her jaw. She walked into the meeting thirty seconds late, cradling a styrofoam cup filled with green tea. This time she was weapon free, wearing a thin yellow t-shirt and black pants with her boots. Her hair was up in a messy bun, showing the yellow hearing aids.

She took the only seat left, which was between the young soldier that invited her for drinks and the sketchy looking man at the door from last week.

"Nice of you to join us." Curtis greeted. Roman grunted in acknowledgement. "What happened to your face?" 

"Someone punched me in the face this morning." 

He nodded and started the session. It was going fine, Roman was just sitting there, zoned out while everyone else talked. Sometimes she listened and sometimes she didn't. Until Curtis asked her a question.

"Do you want to add anything?"

Roman snapped back to reality, luckily she was kind of listening so she could head what he asked. "No thank you."

"Nothing? No traumatic experience while being a Navy Seal?" 

"Not really."

"What about adapting to life after being a Navy Seal?" 

Roman shrugged, "It was pretty easy. I slept for like a week when I retired, and my wife took my niece and I to Coney island the next week." 

"Why were you in anger management? You seem to be just fine to me. Why did you think you needed it?"

"That was also court ordered. I have intermittent explosive disorder and they thought they could cure it after I punched a police officer." 

"Okay. I still have to sign your paper eight more times and since you're fine, every week tell us a different story, it could be about anything. You still need to participate for me to sign the paper. Is that okay with you?"

Roman nodded, "It sounds reasonable, I can do that."

*

*

Roman was handing over the keys of a motorbike to its owner. He was a young man, she estimated early twenties. When he brought in the bike it was destroyed, and now it looked brand new.

"How the hell did you get it like that in the first place?" She took the cash he handed to her and pocketed it.

"I was racing. Once every two weeks a group of us get together and we race for money." 

"I've always wanted to do something like that. I used to build race cars and bikes, but I've never actually raced them." 

"You any good?"

Roman shrugged, "No idea."

"How about I give you the address for the race tomorrow night?" 

Roman shook her head, "No fucking way, my wife would kill me. Thank you for offering though." 

"Come on, when is the next time you'll get to do something like this?" 

The guy was the devil, for one, he actually had Roman seriously considering the offer. "Probably never, but..."

"But nothing. You have to at least give it a try." He could see the hesitation on her face and instead offered, "How about I give you the address and you can just watch the race? If you feel like joining in you can."

Roman gave in, "That sounds fair. I'll just watch. Yeah, I'll just watch."

*

*

"I thought you were retired?" One of the guys from the group asked.

Roman was sporting a wicked bruise next to her left eye, her bottom lip was split open and her right arm was in a cast. Every time she moved, she winced from the broken rib she got from the accident. 

"I am. I participated in a friendly motorcycle race, it was probably illegal, but it was friendly. Mostly. Someone crashed into me when I was at full speed. I almost died. It was awesome." Roman held her rib and breathed shallow breaths as it was excruciatingly painful for her to breathe. 

"Why were you racing in the first place?" Curtis asked incredulously.

"I was bored. My wife is back at the space station, and my brother is in California with his family. One of my customers suggested it and I thought, "What the hell". I regret nothing, it was so much fun. I won three out of four races." 

"Aren't you too old to be doing things like this? You seemed more mature the first two times we saw you." One of the older guys asked, he was two years younger than Roman, but looked like he was just entering his eighties. Probably from the stick he had stuck in his ass.

Roman rolled her eyes, "You are never too old for anything that makes you happy. I had a bouncy house for my fiftieth birthday party, best birthday ever." 

"You sound like one of those goddamned millennials, back in my day..."

"Shut the fuck up Randall, I'm two years older than you, I know exactly how back in the day was. It was fucking depressing. The people were horrible, and the fashion was worse." Roman stated boredly, she slumped into her chair and tried to relax. 

But, Randall had other ideas apparently. He stood up in a threatening manner and pointed at Roman, "Listen here you little bitch."

Curtis stood up and stopped him, "Okay, enough of that." 

"Why don't you sit down before you break your hip again, Gramps?" Roman asked mockingly, making the man fight against Curtis.

"I'll show you who's Gramps you little..." 

"Okay, session's over."

*

*

Revenge.

The idea of revenge alone was utterly ridiculous. There is no satisfaction in the act, no feeling of sweet relief from the years of pain that one person put you through. Roman would know, she spent days tracking down the drink driver that killed her son Ben. What she found was a sad man, drowning his sorrows with each drink. He had a reputation of driving drunk around the town and had been in several life threatening accidents. There was no satisfaction in crippling the bastard, but she knew he could never hurt anyone again, and that alone brought some kind of relief. 

Revenge was pointless and time consuming.

Revenge is exactly what the woman Roman held up against a wall by her neck, was looking for. The dark haired woman struggled for breath as Roman squeezed harder with her good arm. Her right arm was still in the cast from the motorcycle accident. She dropped the handgun she was going to use on Roman and clawed at Roman's forearm. Roman kicked the gun away from the woman and dropped her on the concrete of the dark side walk.

She waited until the woman stopped wheezing and coughing, looking at her to see if she recognized the woman that just tried to kill her. "I don't know you. Why did you just try to kill me?" 

The woman's breathing steadied, "You killed my brother."

Roman frowned and looked at the woman again, she studied her features for anything familiar and came up with nothing. "No I didn't. And even if I did, my job was to kill terrorists and other really bad people which doesn't say much for your brother."

"Yes you did. Twenty six years ago, you came to my parents house when I was eight years old, dressed in your uniform, and you told my parents that my brother Michael died in action. I remember your face, you haven't aged a day." She recalled with a shaky voice.

Roman hummed in realization, "I remember Michael, he was my first friend in the Navy. How the hell did I kill him?" 

"It was your fault, you were supposed to have his back but you were so focused on showing off that he got shot. Because of you, I spent most of my life being beaten by my grieving parents. After they lost the golden child, they started showing their true colours."

Roman raised her eyebrows in confusion, "How the fuck is that my fault? It's not my fault you had shitty parents, go kill your fucking parents, not me. And I wasn't showing off, I don't show off because it's fucking pointless. I was driving us out of the line of fire, through very rough terrain might I add. One of us was bound to get shot and I'm glad it wasn't me, I had a thirteen year old waiting for me to come home in one piece." 

"It's your fault!" She yelled. She scrambled to find the gun Roman kicked away and found it a couple feet away from them. She picked it up and pointed it at Roman who seemed unnervingly calm, "I'm gonna shoot you."

Roman spread her arms mockingly, "Then shoot me." 

The woman's hands were shaking and she had tears streaming down her face, "I'll do it, I swear I will."

"Do it then. Come on, we don't have all night." Roman stalked forward until the gun was inches away from her chest. The woman had to look up at her. "Come on, don't waste my goddamned time. Shoot me!" 

The woman pulled the trigger and squeezed her eyes shut, but instead of there being a loud shot, there was a click. She opened her eyes to see Roman smiling down at her.

"Empty." Roman backed away from the woman and laughed, "See you later alligator." She stuffed her good hand into her jacket pocket and walked off down the dark street, leaving the distraught woman behind.

*

*

"Someone tried to kill me yesterday, isn't that crazy?" The revelation was shocking but Roman grinned at everyone in the group, looking genuinely pleased.

Curtis choked on air and had a coughing fit, "What?"

Next to her, Frank, the guy who always looked sketchy and never said anything, looked surprised, "And you're happy about that?" He asked in his surprisingly deep voice.

"Of course. It was exhilarating, she was terrified at first, then she was yelling, and then she was terrified again when she realised she forgot to load the gun. It's been years since someone tried to kill me."

Randall, the old bastard, scoffed, "Crazy bitch."

Roman smiled at him brightly, "Thank you." 

"Did you go to the cops?" Johnny, a young veteran with a missing arm, asked.

"No. Why?" 

"She might try to do it again. What if she succeeds this time?"

Roman shrugged nonchalantly, "Well, shit happens I guess." 

"No. No. No. You can't say that, you're injured she could have seriously hurt you. What if the gun was loaded?" Curtis asked.

"I would have gotten shot in the shoulder, she really didn't know what she was doing and her hands were shaking a lot." 

Curtis pinched his nose and sighed. He knows he should be used to this, he knows that Roman's brain functions a lot differently from everyone else's, but that didn't make it any easier to deal with. 

"All I'm saying is, you need to be more careful. You're not exactly at full strength with a broken arm." 

"Oh." Roman seemed confused, "Okay, I think I can do that. Be more careful. Does that also mean I can't break into the zoo at night and play with the lions?" 

Everyone in the group's eyes popped open.

"Play with the what?"

*

*

"I don't understand why I need to be here. All I did was shoot some bad guys, I didn't even get dirt on me." Roman whispered to Sam. They were at a press conference that Tony held after an attack on the city. There wasn't much damage and no one except the misguided lunatics died.

Sam have her an incredulous look, "Are you serious? Because of you there were no civilian deaths and only one building was damaged. We were all so focused on getting rid of the bad guys we didn't realise the civilians in the way. You stopped a lot of people from dying today."

Roman seemed to be taking in the information, "Okay. But that was my old job, we never had any fucking press conferences."

Sam shrugged, "I guess Tony's just different." 

Roman rolled her eyes, "Fucking, Tony."

"And now the woman of the hour, the real hero here, my sister Romina." Tony shuffled to her, grabbed her left hand, the right one was still in a cast, and pulled her up to the podium. "Despite the broken arm, Mina managed to take down seventeen heavily armoured attackers, saving the many civilians in the middle of the battle. Roman has been an honorary member of the Avengers since the beginning and this is the second mission she's assisted us with, but the first time she's stuck around long enough to speak at the press conference. She'll be taking any questions you have."

Roman raised an eyebrow, "I will?"

Tony pulled her down and whispered into her ear, "Please help me out, I haven't slept in six days, I'm running on fumes and Pepper will kill me if I cut this short." 

Tony released her and gave everyone that fake ass smile. Roman nodded and he went to sit down. 

"As Anthony stated previously, I am Romina Stark. But you will refer to me as Roman and nothing else." Roman had her business face on, the clenched jaw and the furrowed brows. The threatening look in her eyes and her no nonsense attitude.

"Roman, what do you say to the people who say a deaf woman should not be in the Navy?"

"Don't care. Next."

*

*

"So, Roman? You did something good this week, would you like to tell us about it?" Curtis asked.

Roman seemed confused, and crossed her legs, "I fed the ducks in central park yesterday, I wasn't gonna do it but they were so cute." 

Curtis sighed, "Not that." 

"I fixed twelve and a half cars this week by myself. It was a lot of work but I can't find any good mechanics." 

"Tommy's good with cars and he can't find any work." George elbowed Tommy who turned red in the face.

"Dude." 

"That's a great idea." Roman pat her pockets for paper and a pen. She found some and wrote down the address and her phone number, and handed it to Tommy. "The shop is open from nine to six everyday except Sunday." 

"I'm talking about the Avengers thing." 

"Oh. I mean it's no big deal, people needed help." 

One of the younger guys scoffed, "You drove in the middle of a battle in a beat up bus, picking up civilians while shooting at bad guys. It was one of the greatest things I've ever witnessed. To top it off, your arm was fucking broken. You were steering with your fucking elbow and ripping through abandoned cars like nothing."

"That was something my old team and I did very often, most of the time we had to extract loads of people from very dangerous areas. My guys would be in a car behind and a car in front of the bus. It was nothing new." 

"Quit being so modest. It was cool. And they way you handled those reporters at the press conference was gold. I totally thought that woman was gonna shit herself. It was such a dumb question to ask, you just did the most awesome thing ever and she asks about your love life. Honestly." George rolled his eyes.

Roman smiled and settled in her seat, "You're right, it was cool."


End file.
